Timeline for What is the origin of non-natural grammatical genders in Indo-European languages?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 21, 2023 at 12:05 | history | notice added | curiousdannii♦ | Needs detailed answers | |
| May 22, 2016 at 4:43 | comment | added | brass tacks | There are languages with non-sex-based gender systems, but gender in Indo-European languages quite obviously has a lot to do with human sex/gender: masculine nouns are in the same grammatical category as male humans, and feminine nouns are in the same grammatical category as female humans. According to the World Atlas of Language Structures Online chapter "Systems of Gender Assignment" by Greville G. Corbett, "languages may base their [gender] assignment system on semantic rules, or on semantic and formal rules, but not just on formal rules." | |
| May 22, 2016 at 4:05 | comment | added | user6726 | I think the main problem here is the concept of "record". It's only due to a miracle that we have records of what Aristotle said, and the evidence regarding what Protagoras actually said is quite thin (Protagora being possibly the creator of the "gender" concept). Anyhow, it is clear that gendered nouns have everything to do with gender, and the idea of gender as relating to gentalia is a recent invention. See Aristotle Rhetotic for the distinction between grammatical and natural gender. | |
| May 22, 2016 at 3:23 | review | Late answers | |||
| May 22, 2016 at 6:55 | |||||
| May 22, 2016 at 3:07 | history | answered | Richard Nilsen | CC BY-SA 3.0 |